


Reconaissance

by Theoroark (orphan_account)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Gen, Institutional Racism, Mentioned R76, Mission Fic, Team Talon (Overwatch)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 13:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14955302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Theoroark
Summary: Sombra and Gabe go on an extracurricular mission, and find more than what they expected.





	Reconaissance

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Sombra said. “Why Rio?”

 

Luthra– legs broken, tied to a chair– remained silent. In the cellar’s shadows, Gabriel sighed. Luthra had been a member of Overwatch’s technology division, and had left as soon as things started to go south. He had never known the man very well. But he knew Korpal quite well, and the cult-like sense of loyalty he sought to train in his assets. Going in, he had had his doubts that Sombra would be able to get an ounce of intel on Vishkar through legwork.

 

Sombra turned from the man and beckoned to him, rolling her eyes. He fell into a cloud, exhaling through disintegrating lungs as the pain of a solid form ebbed. His senses became much more predatory in wraith form, and so he could smell the spike in Luthra’s perspiration and hear his accelerated heartbeat, even if he could not see the fear on his face. He ghosted his way next to Sombra and loomed over Luthra. Sombra held her palm flat. He felt impossibly hungry, but he waited.

 

“What the fuck is that?” Luthra panted. 

 

“Tell you what,” Sombra said breezily. “You answer my question, then I’ll answer yours. Deal?” Gabriel moved a centimeter forward and Luthra jerked against the metal chairback. 

 

“I don’t know why Rio,” he said desperately. “I don’t know.”

 

“Bullshit,” Sombra said. “Your job title at Vishkar is ‘location scout.’ You’re not making them espresso there.” Her hand went to the holster of her machine pistol, and she tapped her fingers against it. “Tell me why you chose Rio.”

 

Luthra squeezed his eyes shut. “Big,” he let out in a rush. “Not as many bots as other places. Decentralized. That’s what they told me to look for.”   
  


“Why?” Sombra asked impatiently. 

 

“I don’t know,” Luthra whispered. He was crying a little. “I don’t know.”

 

If he had been whole, he would have been able to tell whether or not Luthra was lying. As it was, he had to trust Sombra when she gave a dissatisfied sigh, took her pistol out of its holster, and shot Luthra in the head. She walked away from the chair as Gabriel descended to feed. 

 

“That was pointless,” she said, when he had reformed. She was leaning against a pillar, staring at a map of the city.

 

“Not entirely.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.” Her voice dropped to his gravelly register. “ _ Another one off the list _ .” She chuckled at her own joke. He said nothing. 

 

“Whatever,” she said, standing up. “At least we know his office’ll be empty now.”

 

They wound their way through the Rio sidestreets. He had no record of Sombra operating here, but she seemed to have a sixth sense about cities. She had kept them away from the favelas– “too gossipy,” she claimed– and away from the more commercial avenues, with their natural populations of security and traffic cameras. Seedy alleys and deserted streets seemed to lay themselves before her. 

 

“Did you just bring me here for muscle?” he asked as they walked. She snorted.

 

“I mean, that wasn’t so much muscle, was it?” He did not respond. She rolled her eyes. “You’re spooky, Gabe. Own it.”

 

He shook his head. “You know plenty of people in Los Muertos you could pay to shake down for you.”

 

“Yeah, well, that’s the thing, Gabe,” she said. “They could be bought. You can’t.”

 

“What makes you think that?” She laughed. 

 

“I answered your question. You answer mine.” He sighed.

 

“What’s your question?” 

 

“What was the deal with the Amari girl?”

 

He stopped in his tracks, next to an overflowing dumpster. She turned and watched him. 

 

“I didn’t want to kill her,” he said. She examined him for a moment longer, then nodded and continued walking. He hurried to catch up.

 

“She damn near nearly killed herself,” Sombra said conversationally. “Don’t know why they don’t give those idiots sidearms, if they’re going to be fighting indoors. She’s fine, by the way,” she said as an aside.

 

“I know,” he said. He had paid a third party to check on Helix’s internal affairs, and Captain Amari had called in sick the next morning. 

 

“She’s with her mom and your ex.”

 

Gabriel stopped. “What?”

 

“Yeah,” she said nonchalantly. “They showed up after we bounced, picked her up and took her back to that hole they were squatting in. Ana’s still wearing her cyberpunk cosplay, by the way.”

 

Gabe started walking again. “They’re both dressing to their midlife crises.” Now, Sombra stopped. He turned back. She was staring at him incredulously. “What?”

 

She shook her head. “Nevermind,” she said, jogging to catch up with him. “You know, I never bought all Widow’s gloating about her mom–,” Gabriel winced but Sombra did not seem to notice, “–but really. She showed an astounding lack of foresight.” Sombra turned a critical eye to him and his heart sank a little. “She’s trained and all. Why did she do that, you think?”

 

This question was worse than the last one, because while Sombra understood attachment to a person, he knew she didn’t understand attachment to a principle. She wouldn’t believe any truth he told her. He knew she saw Fareeha’s actions purely as a matter of betrayal– a friend becoming his enemy– and wanted to know the motivation behind it. She wouldn’t understand that that was Fareeha steadfastly refusing to betray.

 

“You and Widow are right,” he said wearily. “She’s stupid. Just like her mother.”

 

Sombra cocked her head, then laughed. They rounded the corner Vishkar’s Brazilian base of operations appeared before them. 

 

“Right.” Sombra pulled up a schematic of the building, and highlighted an office on the thirtieth floor. “You ready?”

 

“I don’t know why we couldn’t just hack our way in.”

 

“I can’t hack hard light, for some God-unknown reason,” Sombra grumbled. “I’d have to use like, ten EMPs. And that’d draw way too much attention.” She unclipped a translocator from her belt and shoved it in Gabriel’s hand. “Just get on with it.”

 

He sighed, looked up the building, and shadow stepped onto the sill on the thirtieth floor window. He wasn’t able to get a perfect view of where he was landing, and pinwheeled to regain his balance, but righted himself and slowly knelt down to the latch. 

 

“Nice one,” Sombra said in his ear piece. 

 

“Shut up.” She laughed and he stuck her lockpicking device on the window. After a few moments, it beeped and the latch popped open. He slid through, and the translocator activated. Sombra’s feet materialized in his hand. He glimpsed a moment of comprehension on her face before they both collapsed. 

 

“Gabe! Fuck!” 

 

“Could you wait? For once in your life?”

 

“Fuck,” she repeated, pushing herself off him. “You knew I was going to translocate, you should have–”

 

“I should have what, given you a piggy back ride in here?”

 

“Thrown it in first or something! God.”

 

“Look, let’s try to keep a low profile,” he said. Sombra rolled her eyes and pulled up a collection of security feeds. 

 

“Hallway routes are empty,” she said, scanning the images. “Janitorial staff is finished for the night. We’re going to pass by the lab, and there’s more security there, ever since that DJ.” She swiped over to a feed of clean white tables and sparkling threads of hard light, and snorted. “But we just got one nerd there, and they’re asleep. So I think we’re good.”

 

“What kind of ‘more security’ do you mean? I doubt it’s just that ‘nerd.’”

 

“Ah, there are a couple things,” Sombra said. She quickly turned her back to him and headed to the door. “Lot more screening, more cameras– but I took care of those.” She cleared her throat. “Some turrets,” she added in a mumbled rush. 

 

“Turrets that you can’t hack,” Gabriel said wearily. Sombra opened the door and briskly walked down the hallway, and Gabriel practically ran after her. “Sombra, do you even have a plan here?”

 

“Of course I do,” she said, wiggling her security stills. 

 

“That’s not a plan, that’s just intel! You can know what’s there and not know what to do about it!” Sombra pursed her lips and he sighed. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you–”

 

“Yeah, yeah. How well have your plans worked out so far, Gabe?”

 

He fell silent and she immediately widened her eyes and looked over at him. He continued walking, and began to outpace her. 

 

“Sorry,” she mumbled. 

 

“Let’s just get this over with,” he said. Sombra nodded and opened her mouth to respond, before being cut off by hard light bars springing up around her. 

 

“Shit,” she whispered. Gabriel immediately disintegrated and retreated around the corner. He watched as a woman in the Vishkar architect uniform approached the impromptu cage. 

 

“What are you doing here?” the woman asked. Sombra attempted to lean nonchalantly against the bars, and yelped when they sizzled against her sleeve. 

 

“Just visiting a friend,” she said, rubbing her arm. Gabriel rematerialized and looked around the corner. With human eyes, the architect suddenly looked familiar. 

 

“I heard you coming down the hallway,” the architect said. “Only authorized personnel is allowed in the Research and Development wing. Your ‘friend’ would have notified me of your presence.”

 

Gabriel ducked back around the corner. “Sombra,” he hissed into his comms unit. “Her name’s Satya Vaswani. She’s one of Korpal’s assets, and she doubles as a corporate spy. He used her to set up for us in Seoul.”

 

“Well, Satya,” he heard her say. “Guess it must have slipped Korpal’s mind that a Talon envoy was stopping by.”

 

Gabriel closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the wall. Vaswani was silent for a moment, then she laughed. 

 

“And I thought your first lie was pathetic,” she said. “I can think of no organization Sanjay would want to associate with less than Talon.”

 

“That’s funny.” Gabriel heard the slight fuzz of a projected image appearing, and he poked his head back around the corner. Sombra was displaying and image of her and Korpal, her grinning with her arm slung around his shoulder, and him smiling politely. “Because I’m Talon, and he was pretty cool with me.”

 

Vaswani stared at the image, unmoving. Sombra stuck her hand through the bars. “Nice to meet you, coworker.”

 

“You’re lying,” Vaswani said hoarsely. “What evidence do you have that you’re Talon?” Sombra hesitated, and Gabriel sighed and returned to his wraith form, and slid low across the floor. 

 

“Why would I lie about that?” Sombra said. 

 

“To distract me.” Vaswani sounded more confident again. “To turn me against Sanjay. To sow division in Vishkar’s ranks. You haven’t even told me your name.”

 

“It’s– it’s Sombra. I’m Sombra. You’ve heard of me.” Gabriel reformed behind Vaswani, who was pulling out her holovid. 

 

“Right,” she said sarcastically. “You’re an entire hacker collective. Of course.” She raised the holovid to her face, and Gabriel brought the butt of his shotgun down on her. She crumpled, and he quickly caught her and laid her down. 

 

“How gentlemanly,” Sombra said. He stood up and looked at her, still in her hard light prison. 

 

“This is why we need a plan,” he said. Sombra rolled her eyes and spread out her arms. A cybernetic purple bubble spread out from her, and the bars disappeared, along with all the lights in the hallway. 

 

“That’s why I didn’t want to EMP,” she said. She started to run down the hallway, and Gabriel could barely keep up. “Come on. We have to hurry now.”

 

Luthra’s office was just past the lab, and Sombra slid in and quickly closed the door behind Gabriel. As she sat down at the computer, he heard approaching footsteps. 

 

“Sombra.”

 

“Get down,” she hissed. “I’ll go invisible.”

 

“They’ll check each room! They’ll see me!”

 

“I just need to get the data from here. It’ll just take a minute.” Gabriel looked at the now apparently empty chair, looked at the door, and dropped to the ground. The footsteps hurried past, and then he heard frantic voices. 

 

“ _ Sombra _ .” 

 

“Just five more seconds.” Gabriel pushed himself off the ground, walked to the window, and opened it. 

 

“What are you doing?” Sombra said Gabriel groped down at the chair, found a translocator and pulled it off her belt, and tossed it out the window. 

 

“Five seconds,” he said. He could hear a single set of footsteps growing closer. 

 

“Som–” Sombra’s silhouette momentarily became visible again in a flicker of purple light, and then she disappeared. He leaned out the window and shadow stepped down to her. 

 

“Run,” she said, and he turned back to smoke and followed her back to her alleys. 

 

Their ship was parked in one of those alleys, a small drop ship cloaked as a dumpster. It reappeared as Sombra approached and the door slid open. She collapsed in the bay and waved Gabriel towards the pilot’s seat. 

 

“Seriously?” he said. She pushed herself a bit more upright and projected a screen. 

 

“I gotta look at this stuff,” she said. “Don’t you want this whole thing to have been good for something?”

 

“Then I should see too.” She looked up, surprised, then shrugged. 

 

“Sure,” she said, making her way to the cockpit. “I just didn’t think you cared.” Gabriel didn’t respond, and pulled the ship into the air. They flew in silence for a while, Sombra studiously filtering through her data. When she had been quiet for a while, and they were far from Rio’s airspace, Gabriel turned to look at her. She was not tapping at her screens anymore, just staring at them. 

 

“What is it?” he asked. She blinked. 

 

“Did you know about this?” she asked quietly. 

 

“Know about what?” She turned, and her face was drawn and for once, her eyes were deadly serious. She studied him, and then gave a sigh and flipped the screens over to him. 

 

“They’re making armies,” she said. Gabriel studied the regimented design superimposed over Rio’s favelas, with carefully marked demographic estimations. “They’re making factories. They’re taking populations no one cares about and– you know the work Moira’s been doing with Widow? The brainwashing, the conditioning, trying to get it perfect?” She rubbed her face and pointed to a large building planned in the center of the favela. “They’re going to mass distribute it. But you know, they haven’t been sold 100% on Widow. They need to keep her physically dependent on them too, make it so she needs to stop by Moira’s regularly or she’ll die of gangrene. They’re still worried she’ll leave them otherwise. And you know why they think that is?” Gabriel silently shook his head and she laughed hollowly. “‘Cause they got her too old. They think if they get ‘em as kids, they’ll be completely brainwashed. That’s a school,” she said, jabbing a finger at the building. “And that’s where they’re going to distribute it. And these–” she swiped to a map of the world, with blinking markers on it, “–are the other sites they’re going to develop.”

 

Gabriel scanned the map, and his eyes settled on the marker labelled “Dorado.” He looked back at Sombra. She was smiling, but her eyes had no humor in them. 

 

“They’re going to sell them to people like Volskaya, Portero,” she said. “Can’t have a war without armies, right? And no one’s going to miss all those poor brown kids anyway.”

 

“I didn’t know, Sombra,” he whispered. “I swear. If I had known–”

 

“I know, Gabriel,” she said. She snapped her hand closed and the screens disappeared. “I know you can’t be bought.” Gabriel nodded and she stared out over the clouds. 

 

“So. You got any kind of plan?” she asked. He laughed, and this time a bit of her smile reached her eyes. 

 

“I need to go back to Talon,” he said. “Me jumping ship will put them on high alert. The more complacent they are, the better.”

 

Sombra nodded. “Right. Okay. That’ll give me time to get into Moira’s lab, too. Maybe I can corrupt some of her data, slow her down–”

 

“Sombra. I need to go back to Talon. Not you.”

 

She looked up at him, frowning. “I mean. Look, I’m super not thrilled about this, but I’ve been there before. I can handle it. And I mean, there are benefits to being there.”

 

“No. It’s dangerous for you to go back there now. I can still pass, but you can’t.”

 

“Okay, but it’s not going to be a walk in the park for you either. If I go back with you, you have a better chance of surviving. Why don’t you want me to do this? I don’t understand.”

 

“I know you don’t,” he said wearily. 

 

“What?”

 

“Sombra.” He laid a hand on her shoulder and she glared at it, and then him. “Vaswani saw you. She works directly with Korpal. She may not have seen me and even if she did, she wouldn’t recognize me. You told her your name. You’d be walking back into a lion’s den. Don’t be stupid.”

 

Sombra was silent for a moment, and then said, “Tell them I fucked off to Dorado and you don’t know why. They’ll think I’m just doing my own shit. Akande seems okay with that. I want a way back in, if I have to.”

 

“Okay,” Gabriel said. “Just find a safe haven. Lay low.” Sombra nodded and he cleared his throat. “Do you have any idea where a safe haven for you would be? I’ll drop you off.”

 

“Okay,” Sombra said slowly. “You’re going to think this is stupid. But I need you to trust me.”

 

-

 

Widowmaker was awakened by the sound of a plane engine and whipping winds. She pushed her eye mask up her forehead and groped for her holovid on the nightstand, and frowned as she unlocked it. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and she had no new messages. 

 

The doorbell rang. She slowly got up from bed, and grabbed the Widow’s Kiss off her dresser as she left the room. 

 

She opened the front door one-handed, kicked it open, and leveled the rifle. Sombra held up her hands in alarm. 

 

“Geez. Some welcome.” Widow lowered the rifle, frowning. 

 

“I wasn’t expecting you,” she said. 

 

“Yeah, sorry. Didn’t have time to call ahead.” Behind her, the air began to stir again, the telltale sign of a cloaked ship lifting off. Widow narrowed her eyes. 

 

“What do you want?”

 

Sombra grinned sheepishly. “Mind if I crash here for a bit?”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @tacticalgrandma on tumblr if you want to talk to me there.
> 
> I'm debating how to continue this series/if I should, so any feedback would really be helpful to me <3


End file.
